Jordan Peele has Officially Retired from Acting
Peele also detailed how he navigated making Get Out with several Trump supporters in his production crew.
Though he once joked about leaving acting for good, it appears Jordan Peele is now committed to his retirement.
In conversation with actor Bradley Whitford for his "Get Out The Vote" fundraiser supporting Georgia's run-off elections, the director confirmed he'd be exclusively operating from behind the camera from here on out. "I can watch the films I direct, but watching me perform just feels like… a bad kind of masturbatory," Peele tells Whitford. "It’s masturbation you don’t enjoy. I feel like I got to do so much and it is a great feeling. When I think about those great moments when you’re basking in something you said that feels funny. When I think about all that, I think I got enough," Peele added.
From there, Peele and Whitford shifted focus to their time creating Get Out in Alabama months ahead of the 2016 election and how they navigated making a film rife with overt racial commentary with clear Trump supporters in their production crew. "There was this feeling of America that was still happening where we have different beliefs, and I may even kinda think you’re racist but we’re stuck here and we’re going to be cordial to one another and, hey, maybe we might even connect. There were all these possibilities," Peele notes of the early Trump era, when political and cultural tensions were sizably lower than their current fever pitch. You can read a full rundown of their discussion via The Hollywood Reporter.
And while his live acting days seem to be at a close, Peele's voice will still be featured in a number of upcoming and ongoing projects, including Netflix's smash animated series, Big Mouth, and the forthcoming film, Wendell and Wild, where he'll reunite with Keegan-Michael Key to star as two demons taking on a nun and a pair of goth kids. Peele's follow-up to Us is also in production. The title has yet to unveiled, but the film is slated to arrive in July 2022.